


Heads

by harperhug



Series: The Same Coin [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Bucky Barnes, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, F/F, F/M, Hurt Steve Rogers, Loki Does What He Wants, M/M, POV Sam Wilson, Post-Avengers (2012), Protective Pepper Potts, Tony Stark Is Not Helping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-04-21 14:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4832642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harperhug/pseuds/harperhug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam reacts by running. The world reacts in hashtags. And what's left of the World Security Council tries to resurrect it. They meet with slightly more success than Bucky Barnes' attempt to take on HYRDA by himself.</p><p>Except for the first chapter, this takes place in the interlude between Steve waking up at the hospital at the end of CATWS, and Steve and Sam at Fury's grave with Natasha.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. #WeWillRebuild

**Author's Note:**

> I promise I will never have author's notes this long again:
> 
> Raani Jatwinder (Vesper) is a character from Marvel UK's Genetix, who can communicate with machines and enter Cyberspace, which unfortunately leaves her body vulnerable. I've changed her last name to Singh to make her related to the Councilman who says, "Not if it was your switch" in Cap 2.
> 
> Jubilation Lee is a character from Marvel's X-Men, who can generate energy bursts from her hands, and some resistance toward telepaths. I've changed her last name to Yen to make her related to the Councilman who holds the gun to Pierce's head in Cap 2.
> 
> Hope Lee is Jubilee's aunt in the comics, secretly a cybernetic assassin (sound familiar?), but I've changed their relationship to be a sisterly one for storytelling purposes.
> 
> Rachel Summers is a character from Marvel's X-Men, an empath (capable of feeling others' emotions), telepath (capable of forcing emotions onto others), and telekinetic (capable of physically moving objects). Her other powers are really, really confusing, so I'm going to pretend they don't exist.

The first time he met the girls, Sam had been one of hundreds driving up to Manhattan to help with the cleanup effort. He didn’t know what he hoped to gain, other than a taste of the adrenaline rush he’d gotten too used to during combat. At any rate, it couldn’t have been any worse than staying holed up in his apartment drinking himself into a stupor, hoping that this would be the night he didn’t wake up reaching for a man who wasn’t there and would never be again. And it wasn’t like anyone else could be more prepared than himself, except the ostentatiously-dressed Avengers, which apparently included the recently-awakened Captain America.

He found himself wondering what the man out of time was doing now. He was half the reason Sam had even joined. Okay, maybe not half. Steve Rogers had been the reason the Howling Commandoes, especially Gabe Jones, had existed, so that earned the man a bit of grudging respect. And it couldn’t have been easy to lose everything; Sam’s heart twisted when he thought of Riley, most recent recipient of the Bucky Barnes Service Award for soldiers who died during a special operation. It was a way of honoring soldiers without having to say what the soldier’s actual mission was, to protect military secrets. Sam was sick of secrets. People deserved to know that Riley had been shot down trying to save a girl who had been trapped under a collapsed building. Sooraya Qadir was still alive—that was the last thing Sam was aware of doing before he passed out under a convenient sandstorm.

The rush kicked in the moment he started the engine. It took the better part of five days before he arrived, and every one of those nights, he slept like a baby. Sam really didn’t want to examine why he felt more peaceful and happy on his way to an alien-ravaged city than in his own neighborhood, and being placed with a buddy—it appeared that whatever agency was responsible for rebuilding New York operated under the same rules as his second-grade field trips—gave him the opportunity to avoid introspection. Unfortunately, said buddy was the bubblegum-addicted daughter of some World Security Councilmember from China. Whatever the fuck the WSC was doing trying to clean up a mess that was pretty much localized to a single city in America was beyond him. He was probably going to spend his whole time translating and pretending like he knew the history of the remaining touristy sites of New York than actually doing anything productive.

“There’s still a lot of localized fiery…areas, and very few buildings have intact water pipes, so we’re probably going to hear more than a few things go boom,” the girl said with a pop of her gum. “Is that going to be an issue?”

He couldn’t help but marvel at her ability to pinpoint his exact fear, even as he bristled at her accusation that he couldn’t handle said fear.

“Look, I’m sure you’re a real man’s man, but I’d rather not find out you’re prone to flashbacks when I’m standing on top of a precariously-balanced girder surrounded by pointy concrete.”

“Do you ever shut up?”

Bubblegum Pop laughed. “Not really. I have issues with silence and stillness,” the look she gave him as she spoke was one Sam didn’t want to admit to seeing in the mirror.

“Okay.”

“So,” the chipper grin was affixed to her face again, “are we working in the air or on the ground?”

For one wild moment, Sam thought it was his wings she was picking up, but he blinked and saw the backpack filled with energy bars, water bottles, and various supplies, standard issue for every pair of volunteers. “The ground,” he said. Flying in his current state of mind, the state of mind he’d had these last few months, would be a terrible idea.

He tried to convince himself that the remaining working security cameras weren’t swiveling to follow them, but Bubblegum Pop must have noticed, too, because halfway down what used to be 34th, she stormed up to one of the cameras and flipped it the bird.

“Raani, stop spying on me and watch Jazz!” she shouted. The camera drooped, absurdly like a contrite child.

“You talk to cameras now?” Sam snorted, but honestly, with the kind of week this had been, he wouldn’t be surprised if she could.

“No, my friend,” Bubblegum Pop smacked her gum obnoxiously. “She’s a nosy asshole.”

Every single functional camera in about a twenty-foot radius turned to them, and Sam grinned. A flock of pigeons descended and covered the cameras with their own shit.

Bubblegum Pop fell flat on her ass, clutching her side and alternating between increasingly wheezy gasps and giggles, until she paled and her hand fluttered weakly to a pocket on the side of the backpack. Sam spotted the familiar bulge of an inhaler and instantly regretted using pigeons.

“How many?” he asked in his most commanding voice in case she could still hear him. One shaking hand showed two fingers, and he helped her take two puffs.

The attack passed too quickly for it to be anything but psychosomatic, and Bubblegum Pop was on her feet and chewing more loudly than the gum could possibly have warranted, clearly not interested in a conversation. Sam could appreciate that. One or two cameras continued swiveling at them  as they continued walking , but only briefly, and he had a feeling that whoever was at the other end of them was just concerned over Bubblegum Pop’s well-being. He could appreciate that, too.

Their job—everyone’s job, really, just in different quadrants—was to throw smaller pieces of rubble into a reinforced bag and marking the bigger pieces for later pick-up with a can of glow-in-the-dark spray paint from Bubblegum Pop’s backpack. Sam offered to carry it, and Bubblegum Pop accidentally spat out her gum blowing him a raspberry to show him exactly what she thought of that suggestion. She looked at it mournfully for a second.

“Uh,” Sam patted his pockets and found a packet of old tissue paper. Bubblegum-less Not-popping chuckled and took it from him to pick up the gum and wad up the tissue to stick in her pocket before cupping her hands around her mouth.

“HOPE, WHERE ARE YOU?” she shouted.

Almost immediately, a much older girl who must have run from the neighboring quadrant—her hat was marked with the number of a quadrant ten blocks away—appeared, panting. Her eyes were the wild, prepared ones of a fellow soldier, and Sam stood straighter without meaning to.

“Shit, Hope. Are you okay? I just wanted some gum. I’m out.”

For a second, Hope looked like she was going to backhand Bubblegum-less Not-popping across the face, and Sam tensed, but the woman simply huffed and held out a green box covered in Chinese characters that Sam couldn’t read. It was probably mint-flavored, though, if the leaves and Bubblegum Pop’s delight was anything to go by.

“Fuck you, Jubilee,” Hope said.

“I love you,” Jubilee answered fondly, throwing her arms around Hope’s waist. “Tell Rachel this doesn’t mean I’m not still planning her bachelorette party.”

Hope rolled her eyes, even as she patted Jubilee’s head gently. “She has to actually be engaged before she can have a bachelorette party.”

“I don’t care.” The conversation felt strangely intimate, and Sam squirmed. “I’m planning one, and if she doesn’t like it, tell her that she can always have Raani plan it instead.”

“I’ll go, I’ll go!” Hope raised her hands in surrender before running off again.

Jubilee and Sam went back to tossing pieces of rubble into the bag. There were, in fact, several booms, but none of them sounded like explosions so much as cracking granite, and definitely not like IEDs. If some of the pieces of rubble were considerably smaller going into the bag than they were when Jubilee picked them up, Sam chalked it up to a trick of the light didn’t say anything.

The city started quieting down as the sun set, and Sam noticed Jubilee starting to fidget and fill the chatter up with inane words. Volunteers filing past them stared at her twitchy hands, more than one rolling their eyes or, even worse, turning pityingly to Sam.

Jubilee noticed; she would slow down, move normally every time one of those glances was sent in their direction, but a second later her hands would be flexing endlessly again. By the time she dropped a half a heavy cement block on her foot and screamed, Sam had had enough.

“You want to call it a day?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” Jubilee stuck out her chin stubbornly, glaring up at him like she had earlier.

“Well, I’m not. I don’t like not being able to see,” he offered, thinking of smoke so heavy he gagged on it.

“Okay,” Jubilee shrugged. “You carry the garbage bag, though. Want some water?” she asked, holding out their last intact bottle.

Sam downed half of it in two gulps and debated offering her the rest, but Jubilee was looking at her hands like they had personally insulted her, and he decided against it.

When the base of Stark Tower came into view again, he saw Hope walking stiffly next to an even stiffer blonde, whom he assumed was Rachel, both wearing the hat from that faraway quadrant. Both women stopped, and Hope’s hands clenched so tightly that Sam wondered where he could find bandages for the crescent punctures she was undoubtedly making into her palms.

There were more people now, more stares, Jubilee’s breath was coming out in short bursts, and she was still moving like her arms were being jerked on strings against her will. But Sam thought he knew what it felt like to be trapped and unable to go where you were needed most.

He wasn’t trapped right now by anything other than social expectation.

Immediately after throwing the bag of rubble in with the rest of the pile to be crushed, he took Jubilee’s hands and tested out some of his old moves. Maybe that old dance hall was still open. Sure, it hadn’t been that long since he’d last gone, but the time between Riley’s death and now seemed to stretch longer than the entire rest of his life.

Hope laughed the laugh of someone who hadn’t done anything much happier than stop frowning, and she took the blonde’s hands to twirl her around. A tall Indian woman picked up her shorter buddy from behind her, and they started singing some song Sam wasn’t going to pretend to understand.

And then fucking _Captain America_ , who probably cleared three whole quadrants by himself if the way his hair stuck to his forehead and the bags he had been carrying were any indication—in his uniform no less—walked over to Sam and Jubilee with his hand outstretched. Sam passed Jubilee onto him before holding up his phone to take a picture of Jubilee dancing with hearts in her eyes that Sam wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t have as well. Cara and her boys were going to go nuts.

Someone groaned behind him, and Sam turned to see Councilman Rockwell and an Indian man pushing a metal cart stacked high with about a hundred boxes of popsicles. Nearby, a pretty brunette in a SHIELD uniform was helping an Asian man in a suit set up an industrial-sized grill. A redheaded woman, also in a SHIELD uniform, was carrying hamburger patties while the tank top-clad blond behind her was holding a box of vegan-y cardboard-looking shit. This was starting to become a street party.

Just before the sun set, Sam was able to sit on the curb, plate laden with some of everything that had actual meat in it. Jubilee sat next to him with her vegetarian slop-burger. He raised his eyebrow and she stuck her tongue out at him. A sharp, high whistle turned his attention to the sky, and he tensed when the saw the brilliant bloom of a bright pink firework.

But for its proximity, the resulting sound was surprisingly quiet. It made sense; no city official would set off loud fireworks so soon after a major disaster and SHIELD was right behind him with top-of-the-line noise-canceling technology, if there was such a thing. Slowly, Sam felt his shoulders and back relax, and marveled at the absence of pain so complete, it felt like a betrayal to the friend who would never be happy again.

“You okay?” Jubilee asked, poking him out of his thoughts. “Still too loud?”

“Nah,” Sam waved his hand lazily, letting the movement ground him into the moment. “This is pretty sweet.”

A look of wild happiness crossed Jubilee’s face, almost the opposite of the expression that would be on her face when Sam crossed paths with her again two years later.


	2. #WSCFunerals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the city of Kitty Genovese; nobody is coming to his rescue tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the beginning of this chapter doesn't portray police officers in a very positive light. I know that there are many police officers who do their jobs properly and with compassion. However, to the people who are unfairly impacted by biases in our justice system, the police are frequently people to be feared.
> 
> There's some ableism at the beginning of Jubilee and Sam's conversation. There's also a minor allusion to torture and human experimentation at the end of the chapter.

It’d been so long since he had dreamt of smoke and dust that he forgot he screamed in his sleep until Steve was urgently calling his name, hands kept at a respectful distance. Slowly, Sam realized that the tight bands around his arms were actually blankets, and the only thing obscuring his vision was pre-dawn darkness so complete that, by the time he could actually recognize the strange walls as belonging one of Stark’s hastily put-together guest rooms, Steve had almost paced a hole in the carpet.

“I’m gonna go for a run,” Sam said when he managed to extricate himself from his blankets.

“Okay,” Steve said for reasons Sam didn’t understand until he saw the blond slide on his shoes.

“By myself,” Sam added quickly. Emotional displays weren’t Steve’s forte, and while Sam appreciated that he was willing to set aside that awkwardness to make sure his friends were okay, the pace and distance that Sam wanted to run in order to ensure that he got any more sleep tonight would almost definitely make Steve worry more. And then Sam would worry about Steve worrying, and so it would spiral until they both got stress ulcers. It was better for Sam to run alone.

“Are you sure? It’s two in the morning, if you get lost-”

“I won’t. I’ve been here before.” Sam reminded him that it was still early, or late, and Steve did his best to pretend like he wasn’t simultaneously relieved and concerned, and confused as to how that could be as he turned back to his room.

Fifteen minutes and one police cruiser later, Sam was cursing the same fogginess in his brain for forgetting what it looked like when a black man was running around at three in the morning.

“What am I being arrested for?” he asked, again.

“Stop resisting,” one of the officers, whose arms were the size of Sam’s head, told him sharply, an edge of loss undercutting his words. That was when Sam realized he wasn’t going to get out of this. There were simply too many people who had lost too much and looking for anyone to take it out on. And he had stupidly presented himself as a convenient target.

Still, there were several lit windows, and Sam looked at them with cautious hope before remembering that this was the city of Kitty Genovese.

“What do you know about the fight on the Washington Bridge?” another officer, this one with a poorly-removed tattoo of a Star of David on fire and an even more poorly-removed _Hail Satan_ underneath it. Some distant part of Sam’s brain giggled over the fact that this man didn’t know what a pentagram was.

A girl stepped directly out of the 90s and into Sam’s view, complete with spiky black hair and loudly smacking gum. She said something sharp and produced an ID from somewhere and threw it at Pentagram of David’s nose. It bounced off and he remained staring blankly at her.

“You’re from the Chinese consulate? You have diplomatic immunity; why are you here?” Head-For-Arms asked when he picked it up and read it.

Bubblegum Pop—he’d forgotten her name again—said something he couldn’t understand. She gestured to Sam, to herself, and motioned something coming out of her mouth.

“I’m her translator. And kind of her personal assistant,” Sam guessed. Bubblegum Pop gave him an encouraging smile that disappeared when a window in the building behind her revealed a colorful fireball so bright that the sign above the door is clearly legible: FOSTER RESEARCH LABORATORIES.

Bubblegum Pop tugged Sam frantically out of the grip of whoever was holding him and slid her keycard across the door so they can both get inside. Sam looked to his left for the danger, but he’s met by a hallway empty of anything except the smoking half of a box of gum with indecipherable characters next to green leaves, so where the hell did the explosion come from? He turned questioningly to Bubblegum Pop, who was looking mournfully at it.

“Did you set a box of gum on fire?”

“I read about racist New York stop-and-frisk policies on the news,” Bubblegum Pop said instead of answering. “And my name’s Jubilee Yen, since you forgot.”

“Right,” he remembered a wheeze that hadn’t been caused by anything physical. “What’s actually in your inhaler?”

Jubilee glared. “The same thing that’s in anybody’s inhaler. Just because I didn’t go straight to an emergency room doesn’t mean I was faking. I was in a foreign country with a healthcare system even more broken than mine and didn’t feel like making my dad translate my medical history because nobody here bothers to learn the most commonly-spoken language in the world!”

Sam held up his hands, recognizing his mistake. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t in a good place back then, and I shouldn’t have carried that here.”

Jubilee took a step back. “No, you were just attacked, I get it. Why were you running outside at 2:00am anyway? Even I know that’s a bad idea for a black man and I’m a pale girl from China. Do you want some ice?” she gestured to her cheek, and when Sam reached up, he felt the skin starting to rise in a swelling bruise.

“Thank you, but why are you still up?”

“I’m still on China time. I’ve only been here four days.” Jubilee stopped at the doorway, taken aback.

“Your father was the World Security Council delegate from China?” Sam guessed.

“Yeah,” Jubilee said shortly. “Here’s the kitchen,” she flipped on the light to reveal a small room with a refrigerator next to a countertop and sink covered in various objects that looked like they hadn’t been cleaned since the last time Sam had met Jubilee. “I would clean up here, but that’s not my job,” Jubilee swept her arm out to indicate the mess as she pulled an ice pack out of the freezer.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Sam said. “I never got the chance to meet the man personally, but we were all up against some pretty bad dudes.”

“I know,” Jubilee interrupted. “My friend found me the footage.”

“Your friend…the hacker? Rachel?”

Jubilee shook her head and pulled out a bottle of apple juice and tore off the empty plastic signaling it the last of an eight-pack. “No, that’s the other one. Rani’s the…I guess hacker isn’t a bad term. She’d be pissed if you said that to her face, though.” She looked forlornly at the empty bottle.

“Did…did all of you lose your fathers two days ago?”

“Yes,” Jubilee said shortly. She looked at him, face telling a story he’s heard before, but he can’t remember from where. “You’re about to say they’re in a better place, or that it gets better, aren’t you?”

“It doesn’t get easier,” Sam shook his head. “I’m out running because the only way I can get to sleep after a nightmare about the day my best friend died is to run myself ragged.”

Jubilee’s face softened. “My sister’s bringing him back to his childhood home for his funeral, so he’ll be put to rest after the ceremony.”

Sam wracked his brains to try to remember anything about Chinese funeral rites, but all he could come up with was, “Your sister’s name is Hope, right? Why aren’t you going?”

Jubilee’s face twisted into something Sam was incredibly glad he had never seen on his own face. “I have to stay here. It’ll feed into the scapegoating that’s going on, and keep me safe from…” she clasped her hands, “everybody who wants power now that Father’s gone.”

“Why the hell would you be the scapegoat? You’re a fucking fifteen-year-old child!” Sam exploded.

Jubilee actually looked amused. “Thank you, sir, but I’ve actually just turned seventeen, and I got caught kissing a girl four years ago, so I’m going to be the black sheep of the Yen family for quite some time.” Her smile wasn’t as bitter as he expected; in fact, it was downright anticipatory.

Sam frowned, already feeling himself getting roped into whatever crazy scheme Jubilee had brewing behind her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“Natasha did some wrangling so that I can stay with Jane until things calm down,” Jubilee said evasively. And suddenly, Sam realized exactly why Jubilee’s expressions were so familiar. “I’m kind of helping Jane do…stuff, I guess. She’s usually too busy to do things like eat, and Thor hasn’t used the kind of technology that we have for something like a thousand years, so with Darcy on her honeymoon, I’m the only normal person here.”

“Who hurt you?” he asked just before he yawned.

The rest of the box of gum blew up. Sam wasn’t yawning anymore.

“I think I’m going to leave,” he raised his hands above his head.

“No,” Jubilee groaned. “Look, I don’t blow up people, okay? I just…sometimes when I’m really…not excited, but I can’t think of the English word right now,” she gestured helplessly to the ashes fluttering gently to the floor. “I think we’re both really tired,” she said slowly, “and we should go to sleep.”

“Agreed.” Sam looked out the window; a thin ribbon of yellow started to peek out from under the blanket of black. “And I know you don’t use it to hurt people. Nobody who invites strangers into their kitchen because he has a bruise on his face likes to hurt people.”

“Can I warm up some milk for you or something? I know it helps some people get to sleep easier.”

“You can’t just use those energy bursts to heat up food for you?” Sam asked, pulling sheets out of a box of tissue paper to wipe up the ash.

Jubilee shook her head as she poured out a glass of milk and stuck it in the grimy microwave. “No. It’s pretty much detonation or nothing.”

Sam wondered how she had figured out the parameters of her superpowers, which led to wondering how Steve had figured out the limits of his enhanced strength, which led to envisioning the shield smacking him repeatedly in the face until he learned how to catch, until Sam was laughing too hard to notice Jubilee handing him the steaming glass, mental eye-roll visible from space.

“What?” she demanded. “I swear to god, if you’re laughing at me, you’re going to see exactly how hot my pafs can run.”

“No,” Sam shook his head. “I have this friend, Steve. He’s…sort of enhanced, like you.”

“Captain America,” Jubilee was completely unimpressed. “I know. I’ve seen the movies. I liked the one they did, back in…I think it was 2004, with Johnny Storm?”

“ _The Fantastic Soldier._ ”

“Yeah, first time I’d ever heard anyone say the word ‘bisexual.’ And then he and the guy who played Bucky…crap, what was his name?”

“Jefferson, I think? Jefferson something.”

“Right, Jefferson and Johnny kissed, and they didn’t die at the end. I thought, hey, maybe if they could be happy together…” she trailed off and stared at her hands, and Sam felt very, very cold.

“You said you were arrested. Did they do experiments on you?”

Jubilee’s eyes were wide as saucers, but she didn’t move, and she wasn’t shaking.

“Is that why you can,” he nodded to the ashes, “blow things up with your mind?”

“I’m going back to bed,” Jubilee all but snatched the glass from him to rinse and put away.

“I have a friend who runs a bi-weekly meeting for torture survivors at the VA down in DC. If you need someone to talk to, she’s got great advice for putting your life back together,” Sam pulled out a tissue and very carefully wrote out her number.

“I’m not a veteran,” Jubilee protested. “And I wasn’t tortured. I was just…experimented on. For political reasons.”

Sam left the napkin on the table and bade her good night, purposefully exiting in the wrong direction from the exit. He was grateful to see that, when Jubilee came out to correct him, she had a piece of paper sticking out of her pocket.


	3. #FuryWatch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha doesn't know how to ask for help, Steve doesn't know how to back down from a fight, Nick is married, and Sam should really stop being surprised.

“So, when do I have to show up?” Sam asked, looking at the three sets of court summons as if there was more steam rising from them than the fresh waffles next to them.

“Never, if I play my cards right,” Natasha said. “Congress isn’t looking for justice or answers; they just want a scapegoat.”

“Anyone can be a scapegoat,” Steve suggested. He gestured to his midriff, which was still covered in a brace. It turned out that a gunshot wound that should’ve been fatal left even the world’s best supersoldier needing weeks of physical therapy to do so much as take a dump. “They won’t put me in a prison.” No, he was too injured and too good of a symbol, which was exactly why he wasn’t going to be the scapegoat. “If I say that I planned everything-”

Natasha smiled kindly. “You’re still a terrible liar, Steve.”

“I’m not,” a familiar voice said from behind Steve, and sure enough, Jubilee Yen was running up the stairs. “Sorry I’m late. _Somebody_ didn’t tell me they were going on trial,” she punched Natasha in the arm. It was probably too light to feel, but Natasha rubbed her arm and pouted.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Steve asked, not Jubilee, but Natasha.

“She’s the lamest person on Earth, that’s who, and there’s a pretty strong argument to be made for Mars, too,” Jubilee sat down and helped herself to a waffle.

“I’m the lamest? Have you seen what you’re wearing?” Natasha shot back.

“Yeah, it’s called being adorably foreign. You, on the other hand, have no excuse for this lens-less atrocity,” Jubilee flicked Natasha’s shuttered sunglasses.

“My very trusted source tells me this is the height of fashion,” Natasha protested.

“Your very trusted source thinks purple tank tops are proper attire for alien battles.”

“Who are you?” Steve repeated, although not without a smile.

“Oh, Jubilation Yen,” she extended her hand. “I was supposed to be helping an old fart get up here, but he said he could do it on his own.”

Sam could see the exact second it hit Steve who Jubilee’s father had been; his face fell and his arm froze.

Jubilee noticed with a scowl, withdrawing her own hand. Luckily, at that moment, the man who looked incomplete without the tail of his long coat dragging behind him exited the elevator, and the atmosphere lightened.

“Uncle Nick!” Jubilee waved cheerfully and moved in for a hug.

Sam pinched the back of his hand. Oww.

“You have to tell Natasha to stop being a poopyhead,” Jubilee told Fury in a shockingly imperious tone.

“You sound like Steve,” Natasha grinned. Her chastisement could’ve been aimed at Jubilee or Steve both, it was hard to tell.

Jubilee scowled and sat down in front of Natasha’s waffles, which were drenched with more sugary products than Sam had consumed his entire life. “Well, you sound like you, which is way worse.”

Natasha laughed and watched Jubilee eat the breakfast she had spent a whole thirty minutes preparing with something that looked too much like fondness on her face.

“One of the advantages of being dead,” Fury moved so that Jubilee was hidden from Sam and Steve’s side, “is that you can’t be committed for any crimes.”

“Not everyone thinks you’re dead, and I wouldn’t throw you under the bus either way.”

“No,” Jubilee agreed, and said something garbled through a mouthful of waffle. Natasha tossed her a dirty look. Jubilee swallowed and tried again. “You’re going to throw me. I’m much lighter.”

“I don’t hide behind teenage girls,” Natasha refused again.

Jubilee let her fork fall against the plate with a clatter. “You’re not getting yourself locked up, Tasha. When the World Security Council gets up and running again, we’re going to need allies to rebuild Earth’s protection force, and we need to do that before the next alien decides that Earth is a good substitute for the kingdom they really want to rule over.”

“I know what happened,” Natasha held up a hand and silenced the girl. “And you know how important it is to single out a target of our choice before the public does that for us. Global security doesn’t work unless the people we’re protecting trust us to have their best interests.”

The rebuttal to that was so obvious that four people crossed their arms simultaneously.

“Fine,” Natasha held up her hands. “I won’t confess to any wrongdoing and I’ll do my best to defend myself from any accusations that they’ll throw at me. But I’m not going to put this on you,” Natasha tucked a stray lock of Jubilee’s hair behind her ear. “You can’t run from two governments at the same time and still live your life.”

“You did,” Jubilee reminded.

“I didn’t have a life.”

Sam’s shoes were really fascinating to look at, weren’t they?

“You still don’t,” Jubilee knocked Natasha’s elbow with hers and got a piece of waffle between her eyes. She glared at Natasha, then at Fury, but gave up trying to figure out which one of them had beaned her when they both started whistling innocently, or at least as innocently as one could whistle Rebecca Black’s “Friday” and something Sam vaguely remembered playing in the background of some video his sister had sent him. There had been a cat and a poptart? This week was shaping up to be just as weird as last week, albeit with fewer bullets.

“What do you mean, ‘ **when** the World Security Council gets up and running again?’” Steve asked Jubilee, arms crossed, managing to look threatening despite being more bandage than man.

“We need some kind of global defense system, and with SHIELD’s credibility completely shot and footage of my father and his colleagues standing up to HYDRA, resurrecting the WSC is fastest and easiest,” Jubilee said.

“She’s right,” Fury affirmed. “Loki’s scepter’s been showing spikes in activity the last few weeks. If there’s an alien horde on the horizon, we need to be prepared with someone people will accept answers from.”

“Where’s the scepter now?” Sam asked, even though he already knew the answer.

“Jane and Thor have it locked up in their labs,” Fury answered. “She’s the only human being who’s ever survived a full-body encounter with alien tech, and he’s Asgardian. If anyone can handle it, they can.”

Sam tried not to look at Jubilee being laser-focused on Fury, but he was a soldier, not a spy.

“And who is she, that she’s allowed here while this is going on?” Steve nodded toward Jubilee as he gestured between Sam, Natasha, Fury, and himself.

It turns out that it’s possible for a human being to look more closed-off than Natasha.

“When you go to DC for your depositions, you’ll take her. Black Widow will drive her to a different location. I need to see if I can salvage some contacts,” Fury said.

There’s something about the gratitude in Jubilee’s face when she looked at him and the way that Fury’s eyepatch twitched like he winked at her that Sam notices and Steve doesn’t. So it wasn’t really a surprise when he immediately turned and laid into Natasha for letting Fury keep secrets.

“Fury overrode Insight by having two security codes; one corresponds to his good eye, the one you see. The other is activated only by his bad eye, and it overrode Pierce. The only reason any of us are alive is because he keeps secrets,” Natasha snapped back, hands balled into fists.

“Recruiting _children_?” Steve hissed, never one to back down.

“Relax, Mr. Rogers,” Jubilee said when she opened the doors. “Just because war made you doesn’t mean you have to fight every one of them. And it’s not my fault you’re both terrible teachers!” she stuck her tongue out at Natasha and Fury.

Steve kneeled against the linoleum so that he and Jubilee were eye-to-eye and turned her so that only Steve and Sam were in her line of sight. “Do you feel safe where you are?” he asked quietly.

Jubilee scanned his face and spoke with slow gravitas. “I promise to come to you if I don’t feel safe.”

Behind her, Natasha and Fury fist-bumped. Sam rubbed his eyes. It might be time to look into getting some kind of corrective eyewear.

“Now, I believe somebody here promised to tell me what a mocchiato is,” Jubilee turned to Sam with glee that was horrifyingly mirrored on Natasha’s face.

“Have fun,” oh god, even _Fury_ was grinning. Sam was going to hate this, wasn’t he?

“Help me!” he mouthed at Steve, but the national icon wasn’t paying attention, already turned around and getting ready to lecture at a thoroughly unimpressed-looking Natasha and an even less impressed-looking Fury. He had no choice but to let Jubilee drag him to a little café down the street.

“What can I get started for you?” a blonde in a clean white apron asked.

“Can I get bacon and eggs, and whatever strawberry-flavored item the chef most recommends for this weather?” Jubilee hugged herself, and in doing so pushed up her breasts.

“Um,” the waitress blinked. “That’d probably be the strawberry-acai tea,” she said in a higher-pitched voice than a minute ago. “And you, sir?”

“I’ll have whatever’s hot and fresh and not waffles,” Sam said, thinking of his cooling breakfast up in the Tower. He’d lost all appetite for sugar after seeing the summons, but maybe a bite of something salty would piss him off into taking action.

“Alright,” the waitress wrote something down their order, then flipped to another piece of paper and handed whatever she wrote down to Jubilee.

“Did she just give you her number?”

“I’m sexy and I know it,” Jubilee winked.

“So you didn’t do any of Romanov’s mind tricks, right?” Sam gestured vaguely between Jubilee and the waitress.

Jubilee glared at him, and for the first time in a while, Sam felt ashamed. “The things Aunt Natasha show you _are_ real, Mr. Wilson. They might not be the whole story, but they’re what she wants you to see, and that’s real, too, her decisions. Just because it’s not her immediate reaction doesn’t mean it’s fake or that it’s not a part of her.”

Sam was going to let her words percolate in his mind, two stuck out so obscenely that their food had come by the time he was able to vocalize. “You call her ‘Aunt Natasha?’ And you call Fury ‘Uncle Nick?’”

Jubilee gave him a puzzled look and a question muffled by food. She swallowed and tried again. “Did you not know they were married?”

“No, I thought she and Steve-” but Jubilee burst into laughter.

“What, just because they kissed?” she snorted. Sam’s eyes were threatening to pop out of their sockets, and Jubilee pulled out her phone. “Did you really not know? Raani found it for me. Hang on, let me have her send it to my phone.” She pulled out her phone and texted in incomprehensible squiggles and lines. A few minutes ad two empty plates later, her phone quietly bleeped out the dulcet tones of Taylor Swift and a dying goat, Raani’s name flashing on the screen.

Sam leaned forward eagerly, but whatever she received was clearly not a hilarious video, because the last time Sam had seen anyone that pale, he was unconscious on a riverbank with three gunshot wounds to the stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be from Rachel's POV, and we finally get into the plot, I hope.
> 
> Like it or hate it, tell me what I'm doing wrong. Be harsh.


	4. Interlude: WSC

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their fathers had been keeping secrets, that much was clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no possible way that the World Security Council would send just four people to something as significant as Insight's launch, so it's almost certain that more than just Councilmen Sing, Yen, and Rockwell died.
> 
> Clarice Ferguson (Blink) was played by Fan Bing Bing (who also played one of the doctors who did Tony Stark's surgery at the end of Iron Man 3) in Days of Future Past. She has crystal javelins that she uses to make portals to "blink" her in and out of existence.
> 
> Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) was played by Ellen Page in Days of Future Past and The Last Stand that Never Happened. She can "phase" herself, making herself more or less corporeal. She's also hella cute.

“The Council calls SHIELD director Nicholas J. Fury to the stand,” Councilwoman Hawley’s voice was small, shrunken by loneliness and the fact that the order it gave was impossible.

“Councilwoman Hawley, with all due respect, Director Fury was pronounced dead two days before the Helicarrier crash,” Hope Yen spoke up.

“There’s official SHIELD footage of him landing on the Triskelion roof,” Rachel Rockwell-Summers countered.

“There’s also official SHIELD footage of Councilwoman Hawley ripping her face off,” Jaswinder Singh snarked.

“But that still means that there could be a living witness to what happened inside the Triskelion besides the Black Widow,” Rachel argued.

“Let’s call for a vote,” the South African councilwoman called from too far back to be seen.

“Well,” Hawley didn’t sigh so much as give up, “usually the people who fill these seats are ordered by level of experience, but I suppose I’ll have to suspend the rules,” Hawley rubbed her temples, shoulders slumped under the nearly literal weight of the world. “Very well, we’ll have a vote. Those in favor of suspending the search for Nicholas J. Fury, please press the button at the base of your microphone so the computer can record your vote.”

Rachel looked around like she was merely curious, but mentally, she was reaching out as if with a gentle hand. Save the two women sitting between her and Hawley, everyone’s mind was an open book.

Too much of an open book. She blinked rapidly and tried to regroup. Everyone’s hands were reaching for their microphone, either to register a negative or affirmative vote, and so much sensation would be overwhelming. She latched onto the brightest flare of anger against Nick, which came from the nineteen-year-old councilwoman from Russia who hadn’t expected to lose her father so soon. Well, Rachel knew something about what that felt like, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to use it to look around for everyone who also wanted to vote in favor of a manhunt. She needed Nick to be a free man, to move without fear, or she couldn’t restore peace to the world.

It was draining, flicking minds like a switch and cloaking her hand so they would believe the decision was theirs, but Rachel managed to wrangle a majority against restarting the search for either a Nick Fury or a lookalike. If there was moisture on her face when she looked up, it was simple enough to convince a pair of curious eyes that they were tears so that they would look away. Jazz patted her shoulder with real sympathy, and the representative from Croatia snorted.

“It’s good to see that the Rockwell-Yen-Singh alliance is still intact,” a bolder representative from France muttered just loudly enough to be heard, but still quietly enough that he could claim it was an accident.

“Just because you’re too abrasive to form an alliance with doesn’t mean they’re bad,” the Latverian councilman said quickly. He was one of the few who had survived Insight simply because he had voted against its creation in the beginning and refused to have anything to do with it. And honestly, he had the right idea. Maybe he could be of use.

Pushing at his mind felt like opening a freshly-oiled gate. Rachel felt several faint flashes of expectation opening up like flashbulbs: Yen’s special tablecloth during a long dinner, Singh’s cologne lingering on his hand after shaking, the taste of her father’s favorite risotto, all innocent. Except for the fact that those encounters were between people she loved and trusted with a man who intended to establish himself in the technology world by killing Tony Stark while the world was still deeply immersed in chaos.

Rachel smiled back. She wasn’t unfamiliar with the dark places of the human psyche.

Jazz made a soft noise of protest when Rachel elbowed her in the side.

“Sorry,” Rachel made sure to tilt her phone so that the reflection from the screen made her intentions clear.

“It’s fine. There isn’t much personal space in the center,” Jazz smiled, eyes apparently averted politely. They grew to the size of saucers when she saw what Rachel had typed out, and the elder Singh daughter pulled out her own phone.

JUBILEE?

Rachel allowed herself a yawn, and shook her head like she was trying to wake herself up.

Jazz nudged Rachel’s foot with her own. GROUP DISCUSSION UNDER GUISE OF FUNERAL PLANS.

Rachel nodded as she shuffled her note papers as if she had just come to some kind of resolution with her emotions, but no one was paying her any attention, so it was kind of pointless.

She let her mind search the Latvian councilman’s again, finding nothing but camaraderie between him and her father, except his hatred for Tony Stark, palpable in the form of some kind of robot invasion that looked to be straight out of one of the worse episodes of _Doctor Who_. Actually, she might be looking at his memories of a particular _Doctor Who_ episode. Human minds were so terribly complicated, and she had to give most of her focus to what Hawley was saying.

“I know that we have suffered a great loss, not only in terms of people we loved and memories we’ve shared, but in experience and discretion that the world desperately needs in times like these. I was spared by a stroke of luck, and I cannot say how much I wish that my friends and my colleagues could’ve shared the same fate. So allow yourselves to grieve and feel your pain, but come back ready to work and defend this country to the best of your ability. Thank you, you are all dismissed.”

Rachel and Jazz pushed their papers into their purses and walked over to where Hope was sitting next to the Latverian councilman, making small talk. She excused herself when she looked up and saw Jazz and Rachel coming forward.

“Sorry,” her smile was feral, with teeth. “My father died with theirs. We’re planning a joint funeral.”

“Not a problem. Victor von Doom,” the man said, friendly. “I know some people think you’re too close to each other, but I think the problem is really the fact that the rest of us aren’t close enough. I’ll see you all around,” he winked at Hope, who simply walked by him without even noticing.

“He said he had an alliance with our fathers,” Hope looked at Rachel for confirmation.

Rachel nodded. “Everything that I could see pointed to a friendly relationship.”

“Then why have we never met him or vacationed with his kids?” Jazz asked the obvious question.

“He doesn’t have any. He’s too busy trying to kill Tony Stark with robots,” Rachel answered.

“Is that even possible?” to her credit, Hope didn’t even pause.

“It might be. My father voted in favor of nuking Manhattan,” Jazz said slowly, eyes on Hope. Councilman Yen and the late councilmen from Japan and Korea had been the only ones to vote against dropping a nuclear weapon during the Chitauri invasion, and they were easily overruled by everyone who assumed they were biased.

“Mine, too. He has documents up in his attic, all sorts of history. Maybe he knew something you didn’t. Besides, you know, the fact that most European countries don’t have the same history with nuclear weapons that Japan and its neighbors do,” Rachel said softly.

“I’ll bring some of my father’s. Maybe Stark is building something,” Hope agreed easily.

“I can’t,” Jazz said without much regret. “Raani’s home. She deserves to know.”

“And Jubilee will accept it best from her,” Hope said without any wistfulness.

Rachel narrowed her eyes. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Quit it,” Jazz grabbed Rachel’s arm. “Whatever your problem is, it needs to end here. Our fathers’ lives are at stake.”

Rachel shoved her arm out of Jazz’s grip, but she accepted the lecture as something she needed. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Have Raani send over everything your father has,” she reminded Jazz.

* * *

The young brunette who answered the door was so pretty that Jubilee was actually frozen in place long enough for her to start looking concerned.

“Clarice Li!” she blurted out.

“I don’t know anyone by that name,” the pretty, soft-featured girl moved to close the door.

“Clarice Ferguson, right,” Jubilee smacked her forehead. “Sorry, it’s just been a long time. Um, can you please tell her that Jubilation Yen is here to see her?”

The doorwoman’s mouth fell open. “Come inside,” she stepped aside. “She talks about her daughter to us all the time.”

Jubilee grinned in relief and stepped into a majestic foyer. “Wow, so this is the school, huh?”

“Yes. My name’s Kitty Pryde,” Kitty stuck out her hand.

Jubilee took it. “And you already know my name.”

“So, what can you do?” Kitty asked.

Jubilee made sure both hands were clearly visible and created a simple shower of sparks.

“They’re pretty,” Kitty nodded, impressed.

“Yeah, but they sound like farts.”

“They don’t smell, though,” Kitty reminded, and both girls laughed. “Stay here,” Kitty advised. “Most people here don’t like strangers, but if you introduce yourself I’m sure they’ll be okay. I’ll come back with Blink as soon as I can.”

With Kitty gone, Jubilee was left staring at the foyer, empty anything except the giant M on the floor and paintings on the walls. Two of them looked familiar, a boy with a bad dye job and a girl in red boots. She didn’t get a chance to look closer, however, because her mother was calling her name and running forward, and she found herself rooted to the spot.

(How long has it been since we last met?)

(Too long.) “We need to talk in private. How many telepaths are here?”

Clarice’s face fell, and Jubilee reached forward to hug her again for almost ten minutes, until Clarice extricated herself and led them to the front lawns.

(Magneto doesn’t like you.)

“Magneto can suck my clitoris,” Jubilee said loudly. The metal clasps on her purse vibrated in a warning she ignored.

Clarice‘s sigh was equal parts affection and exasperation as she sat down on a stone bench. “If you’re here, then I can attend Shogo’s funeral?”

“You have to be there. I can’t,” Jubilee swallowed.

Clarice looked at Jubilee with the sharpness of perception only mothers had. “You’re planning something,” she murmured. “You want to bring him back.”

“Natasha gave me a jar of ashes,” Jubilee’s voice was tight with hope and anger when she leaned forward to ensure that the conversation was private. “Same with Rachel, and Jazz and Raani. I saw them falling with holes in their chests, and I know the building collapsed, but there’s no way the damage was so extensive that Nick couldn’t at least let me see their bodies first.”

Clarice sucked in a sharp breath.

“Oh, right, sorry, I forgot. Uncle Nick’s still alive. And actually, that’s the second reason I came here. I need to ask for a favor. Do you know where Aunt May lives?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter took so long! The next chapter shouldn't take as much time, but it is set a few days before this one.


	5. #AreYouOnTheList?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve finds out Jubilee's secret. Jubilee finds out Natasha's secret. Rachel found out Hope's secret a long time ago. And nobody is prepared to know how many secrets the WSC had been keeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The this chapter chronologically takes place just before the second scene in the last chapter, but I wanted to introduce Jubilee's mother before introducing the idea of multiple superserum experiments (because you know they wouldn't have quit, and the Hulk's existence proves that people have been trying for a while).
> 
> There's a passing but fairly graphic description of an assassination in the second section, in the paragraph that starts, "Well, to an extent."

Teenage girls were supposed to be insufferable because of how much they talked and how vapid their thoughts were. If that was indeed the case, Sam was apparently one himself, because every word coming out of Jubilee’s mouth was thoroughly, if internally, shared with himself and Steve.

“Seriously, Tasha, couldn’t you have picked anything from this century?” Jubilee groaned, flipping through Natasha’s iPod. “I’m going to die if I have to listen to any more godawful disco music. NO! I WILL NOT TURN THE BEAT AROUND YOU PIECE OF-”

Natasha elbowed Jubilee to keep her from turning the radio off, so Jubilee shrieked and struggled against her tickling, palm turned thankfully away from the former spy’s body when everything went to hell and the steering wheel caught fire.

Sam unbuckled Steve and himself as the idiot reached forward to undo Jubilee’s seatbelt because he had no sense of self-preservation. Natasha was smarter, unbuckling her seatbelt while kicking out her door. Sam turned left to kick his own door and felt Steve push him out from behind. He fell out with the door covering most of his body

Hissing, Natasha pulled her blistered hand off it and used her other hand to undo both their seatbelts almost simultaneously. Behind her, she could see Sam and Steve undoing their seatbelts as Steve kicked out the door on his side. Her own legs shot out to her left a second later as she wrapped both arms around Jubilee’s middle and leaned back so that four bodies scraped along the asphalt on two car doors. The vehicle itself went off the road, wrapped itself around a tree, and burst into flames.

“I thought SHIELD cars had autopilot,” Steve panted, wincing as he picked the bigger pieces of gravel out of his badly scraped ankle.

“ _SHIELD_ cars,” Natasha reminded, just barely less breathless. “Without SHIELD, most of the tech in that car is obsolete.”

“So we have to slum it and call Triple A or some-ow,” Jubilee grabbed her stomach and paled almost as badly as Natasha a second later. “No, don’t,” she kept Natasha’s hands from lifting up her blouse and feeling around her abdomen. “It’s just a menstrual cramp, I don’t have internal bleeding, Natasha, stop!”

Natasha drew herself away slowly. “When the adrenaline wears off…”

“Natasha, have you ever known me to be quiet when I could complain, instead? And besides, you have to buy me dinner at least twice before I let you see me with my shirt off,” Jubilee winked.

This drew out a shaky but present smile before Natasha abruptly started walking toward the car.

“Shouldn’t you be getting out of the way?” Jubilee asked, following until Sam threw a protective arm in front of her. “I mean, that’s a car on fire. Won’t it explode?”

“I need some documents from the glovebox,” Natasha replied.

“Not all cars are Pintos made by Michael Bay,” Sam answered, since Natasha was clearly not going to while she was hissing and glaring at the glove compartment that was too hot to open with already-burned hands. “Wait, do you know who Michael Bay is? Tell me you know who Michael Bay is, otherwise I’ll feel like an idiot for spouting off a one-liner that doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s because you are an idiot. Of course I know who Michael Bay is. I was in the fourth movie, and Megan Fox is hot. _Move your arm_ ,” she fairly pushed him out of her way. Steve moved forward, too, clearly intending to stop her, only to freeze in place when Jubilee’s hands started to glow even in the glare of the afternoon sun.

“What the hell are you?” he demanded, recovering just after Jubilee vaporized the front of the glovebox and reached in to take out a thick stack of paper. Jubilee flashed him an irritated glare and started to thumb through them.

“I’ll take those,” Natasha interrupted, reaching for the papers.

“No, really, what the hell are you?” Steve’s hands were curled into fists, but he thankfully stopped when Sam pressed a hand to his chest. His gaze might have burned a hole into Jubilee’s head if she were paying any attention to it instead of holding the papers away from Natasha’s hand.

“What’s SHIELD doing with cryotank schematics?”

“It’s a suspension tank,” Natasha said in such a contrite, quiet voice that both Sam and Steve turned to her in surprise. “Full life-support systems.”

“I know that, because I was _actually in one_ ,” Jubilee said acidly, miles removed from the girl who’d been joking about Natasha’s now-melting disco tape. “What I don’t know is why SHIELD’s trying to build one. Well, _was_ trying to build one.” She took a few sheets of paper out of the stack and stuffed them in her pocket. “Shit,” she patted her other pockets and found nothing but her phone. “Does anybody have bus money? I need to go to,” she spun around, looking at her phone until she pointed eastward, “to Westchester County.”

Unsurprisingly, Steve had cash, and even less surprisingly, he held it out.

“Thanks,” Jubilee said, looking so calm compared to her near hysteria just a second ago that it was even more obviously a front.

“Who are you?” Steve asked.

“I’m a failed version of you,” Jubilee said flatly. “Enhanced Superserum Experiment Subject Twenty-Three-Point-Five. No idea what the point-five is there for—it’s not like it was a follow-up test for anything. Just a couple days of suspension in some breathable liquid with an IV attached to me, and a bunch of people waiting for something to happen. And then the Fourth of July happened, so yay!”

Natasha put a hand on Jubilee’s trembling shoulder, and the girl shook her off. “I’m going to Somers. Bye Natasha!” She turned to give the spy a mocking salute that was probably more reassuring than Natasha let on. “I’ll call you when I need you to pick me up.”

For only the second time since Sam had met her, and probably not much more often than had ever occurred, Natasha looked at a loss for words.

“Enhanced Superserum Experiment Subject Twenty-Three-Point-Five,” Steve repeated flatly, hand outstretched for the file in Natasha’s hand. She handed it over without protest before covering her face with her hand. “Assuming I’m one, what happened to two through twenty-three?”

Natasha uncovered her face, muttering, “No more secrets,” to neither of them, and took a deep breath. “Phil Coulson was the first success, just two years after you crashed your plane, but the only observable benefits were increased longevity and faster healing. So we kept trying.”

* * *

“I’m not feeling that great,” Rachel lied when Hope asked to be buzzed in past the gate to the Rockwell estate. “Can I cut a rain check?”

Hope’s derision was audible even through the static. “I can tell the difference between actual congestion and when someone’s just lying on their stomach. Open the door or admit you don’t want to be alone in a room with me.”

“You know I have security. They’d shoot you in a second if they think you’re a threat to me.”

“No they won’t,” Hope easily called her bluff. “Not unless you make them.”

Rachel knew that Hope was grinning smugly at the sound of Rachel’s cursing, but she couldn’t help herself. The security guards considered Hope, Jubilee, and the Singh sisters just as much their charges as they considered Rachel. Getting the girls together multiple times a year while their fathers were away on business tended to familiarize even the most distant of people.

Well, to an extent. Nobody knew that Hope was an assassin until after the Manhattan incident. Rachel had been tasked with interrogating the man who had managed to convince all but three members of the council that detonating a nuclear weapon was the best way to end the Chitauri invasion. Apparently, Hope didn’t agree that interrogation was the way to go, because Rachel’s intended kidnap victim had had his throat slit while his murderer was in the middle of transforming the murder weapon back into her own bloody hand.

To be fair, hardly anyone knew that Hope was an assassin, even now. Rachel had been too relieved that she wasn’t going to have to complete her interrogation to do anything but acquiesce to Hope’s request that she not divulge anything she knew about the elder Yen sister’s nighttime activities. And now her mind was going in a whole different direction. Ick.

“I have the meeting notes you asked for,” Hope said casually, as if they were just having another play-date instead of a meeting between two women who planned to bring their fathers back from the dead.

She had more than that; several security officers were dragging carts of boxes full of documents, undoubtedly in Mandarin that Rachel was going to need Hope to understand. Rachel flopped onto her back, groaning internally. And externally, if Hope’s quiet chuckle was any indication. There was nothing for it; three men’s lives depended on this.

“Thanks,” Hope nodded, distantly polite. “I didn’t want to have to break in.”

Rachel didn’t want to know what her face was doing that made _Hope Yen_ take a step back in alarm. “YOU CAN BREAK INTO MY HOUSE?”

“Oh, is that what you were scared of?” Hope sounded derisively relieved. “Rachel, when your body can do anything you want it to, you can break into every building. Anyway, where are your father’s notes?”

Rachel opened the doors to her walk-in closet, revealing stacks of boxes to rival the size of Hope’s.

Hope let out an impressed whistle. “Well, we are definitely not going to be short on information,” she said, pulling out one packet of papers and starting to go through it.

“Would you be willing to kill Victor, if we find out he’s lying?” Rachel asked, trying to focus on the information Hope brought.

“Would you be willing to kill our fathers if we find out he’s not?” Hope wasn’t playing this game. Rachel couldn’t manipulate her if she didn’t want her to.

Rachel looked horrified. “I don’t kill,” she practically snarled.

“No, you’re right. You replace,” Hope let one corner of her lips curl up in disgust. “At least I give their families the closure of a body to bury. You leave them with a facsimile straight out of the uncanny valley.”

Rachel’s anger was a physical wind, pushing Hope further and further back into the closet. “I let them _live!_ ”

“No, you let the version of them that you created live, the version of them that your father and Pierce decided was acceptable. You think your way is kinder? My body will do anything I tell it to. I can download, transfer, delete information, but I’ve never deleted any of my assassinations. And it’s not out of guilt—I haven’t felt guilty over killing anyone since Jubilee got kidnapped.”

Hope grew taller as she spoke, and now it was Rachel backing away even though there was no wind blowing against her. Hell, Hope wasn’t even moving.

“I am the sum my memories, my hopes and passions and fears and aspirations. Deleting any of that is deleting me. Deleting any of that and shoving something else back in?” No, Hope wasn’t growing. Rachel realized she was hunched down, trying to make herself as small as she felt. “That’s letting somebody else wear my skin.”

Hope turned her index finger into a small blade and opened an envelope to reveal a thick stack of paper. She didn’t turn her finger back, and the blade was the least deadly part about her. “Raani finally went through the entire list of Insight targets.” She threw it at Rachel’s feet.

“Neither of us are on it. Our fathers aren’t on it.”

Rachel swayed, dizzy as she picked it up. There must have been a hundred names in just the first page. “Of course not, they created Insight, they would make sure it could protect themselves and their kids.”

“Nope,” Hope’s face glowed with spiteful glee. “Jubilee, Raani, and Jazz were all targets. Hell, my mother’s a target, and she hasn’t done anything to piss off Pierce since the serum experiments. You think your way is kinder?” and finally, her voice broke. A single tear gleamed down her cheek, and she wiped it away with a surprised expression.

“You have no idea how relieved I am that our dads signed off on my methods and not yours.”


	6. #MetalArmedMan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve, Sam, and Natasha clear the air (mostly), Bucky almost gets captured, and Maria Hill sees more of Pepper and Tony than she ever wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a scene in the middle where the Winter Soldier pats a girl's chest, which could be seen as nonconsensual groping. I just wanted to put it out there.

“Reports are coming in that the SHIELD base was used for HYDRA operations. For more on this, we go to our senior field correspondent, Jeff. Jeff, what can you tell us about the destroyed base?”

“Thank you, Michael. As far as we can tell, explosive devices were placed at the base of the walls, fifteen feet apart. Investigators have managed to reconstruct one bomb that didn’t go off because too much dust had gathered on the inside, and the bomb squad found a reinforced room in the basement that held older bombs like it. Chances are, the explosion was a spur of the moment attempt to evade detection, but with all the dead men and women inside, it doesn’t look like the bomber left behind any evidence. However, a local Starbucks patron took this video on his phone.”

The reporter who seemed way too happy to be standing in front of a smoking pile of rubble was replaced by a vertical camera shot of a boy complaining about how everything was pumpkin spice-flavored, and in the background a man who could be described as “dark-clad” and nothing else walked inside the then-intact building. The reason that Steve, Sam, and Natasha were so closely-watching this report at yet another one of Natasha’s safehouses was because, the second before the video ended, the sun reflected brightly off the dark-clad man’s arm.

“It could be the metal doorknob,” Sam said, unconvincing even to his own ears.

“It’s Bucky,” Steve shook his head. “Only he would know this place existed.”

“It’s the Winter Soldier,” Natasha corrected. “The way he walked, Steve, I can recognize that walk.” She didn’t need to add that she recognized it from repeated nightmares of almost-dying at the Soldier’s hands next to the corpse of her charge.

“He’s staying on the coast,” Sam remarked.

“And getting closer to Brooklyn,” Steve couldn’t hide his excitement at the possibility.

“We don’t know what he would go to Brooklyn to do. Steve, his last mission was to kill you,” Natasha reminded. “And he almost did it.”

“He saved me,” Steve insisted.

“We don’t know that,” Sam hated the shake in his fucking voice. “You hit your head so hard, the bumps didn’t go down for _weeks_. You _fell_ from a _Helicarrier_.” He never, ever wanted to see a friend fall again.

“And we don’t know where he is now, so we keep going,” Natasha said. “My trial’s tomorrow. Steve, you’re a big, scary man, you be the senator this time.”

“And take your shirt off so she’s distracted,” Sam added.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be the one who’s distracted,” Natasha smirked.

Sam had the grace to blush. Steve didn’t.

“You didn’t answer my question about Coulson and the others. Jubilee can’t be the only experiment survivor. And how could you let her go out on her own? We don’t know how many people are looking for her or-”

“Until this morning, Nick, Clint, and I were the only living people who know what she can do,” Natasha said.

Next to Steve, Sam shifted, uncomfortable and silent.

“And Director Coulson,” Steve added. “Wait,” he smacked himself on the forehead, “you said living people. So forget what I said.”

Natasha took a deep breath. “Steve, there’s something you should know.”

* * *

There is enough moisture that the air has a physical weight against the Asset’s arm. The Asset can feel fog creeping in where bits of drywall and office chairs and computers stuck to dried gore hadn’t quite managed to seal the slats shut, misting up the inside and slowing the Asset’s arm down. But the Asset also knows that turning the arm thirty degrees to the right will cause an internal fan to whirr the moisture away, even if it took longer than usual because the Asset hadn’t been hosed down for a while, so there’s dirt gumming up the blades. The Asset doesn’t know how it knows this, but it must have something to do with how it can almost feel hands between its wrist and its elbow, guiding it. Those hands were big and rough. Rough in gesture, not in texture. The Asset doesn’t have a frame of reference for what rough in gesture would be like.

The Asset doesn’t have a frame of reference for a lot of things, but it knows that the windows on the stores it passes by are clean, clear, and almost as polished as the voice from the radio floating through the cracks past the wall that separated the Asset from its next-door neighbor.

“The search continues for the metal-armed man from the Washington Bridge,” and the voice is brown hair and red lips and _aching_ deep in his bones because Stevie had a dame now, what was he good for?

The Asset makes itself stop, because it was not allowed to pause the Mission over something as simple as pain, and it needs all relevant information to complete the Mission. Being captured by hostiles would interfere with the Mission. It cannot fail the Mission. Failing means sitting in the Chair. And now that it’s choosing its own Missions, it needs more information than the Chair would ever allow it to have.

“Police are asking everyone to be on the lookout for a six-foot, 200-pound man with dark brown hair. Wow, descriptive. Good job, NYPD.”

There’s a knot in the Asset’s middle that would tell him it needs its feeding tube. It walks outside, past several store displays of things it vaguely recalls would ease the knot, but it’s not allowed to touch them, even if they didn’t smell like things that aren’t smells. A child’s sticky brown bar smelled like gunpowder, blood staining carpet, and horrified diplomat eyes. One display, little lambs dripping red, smells like 32557038, which is such a ridiculous notion that he has to constantly wipe nonexistent mud off his palms. And then it passes by another child fumbling with a squeaking contraption which sounds like an irregular heartbeat under a flesh-and-blood left hand as the other rubs a jutting spine doubled over, in pain, for breath. It falls out of her hands, and she’s wheezing.

He grabs the inhaler with his left hand and presses it to her mouth with practiced motions as his right is pressed against his chest to feel it rise and fall. Her distressed noises soften and slow to a stop. This is wrong; her skin shouldn’t be so soft on either side of his palm.

There is only a split second of distracting wrongness, but it’s a split second enough. Six handlers rush the Asset and pin it down: one for each limb, one holding down its neck, and one stepping on its spine, all with their own asset pointing at its central target. A seventh walks up to the child with the inhaler and tells her that everything will be okay, that SHIELD will always watch out for her. The child nods, confusion and fear taken over by relief and something that the Asset had observed in Captain America’s face. The Asset stares at her, past the wrongness of black hair and brown eyes to the rightness of a slender frame drooping with world-weariness and propped up only by just fury.

The handlers discuss finding the Asset and spinning and HYDRA, although the Asset doesn’t know what they have to do with each other. They bring him to the Chair, and the Asset starts to breathe faster. It can identify this feeling as fear from observing the symptoms present in many, many, many bodies, some of whom survived the experience. The Asset isn’t sure it will.

“Prep the machine,” a man with a forgettable face and even more forgettable voice says.

“Just wipe him like HYDRA,” the seventh handler, the one who had reassured the child, puts her hands on her hips.

“We don’t have any better way of putting the Winter Soldier out of commission, except killing him, and obviously, even that might not be permanent,” the bland handler gestures to himself.

They argue until the reassuring handler leaves, kicking garbage on the sidewalk all the while. Other handlers press it into the familiar Chair, which buzzes once it clamps around his head.

It _hurts_

And then it doesn’t, because the clamps have disintegrated into dust. So has the chair itself, and the handlers are staring at the child stepping through the broken wall. One of her hands is emitting sparks, and the other is gesturing toward the hole in the wall.

The forgettable handler looks at her with infinite compassion. “You shouldn’t do this.”

“You shouldn’t exist,” the child is shaking, and the Asset wants to put a blanket around her shoulders even though it doesn’t remember washing the spilled liver juice out of it. “And my father shouldn’t be dead. So here I am, and now you’re leaving.”

“I could-” but the forgettable handler doesn’t finish his sentence. He nods at his team to exit from the hole in the wall, which they do reluctantly, with much grumbling. Before the lead handler leaves, he pats her on the shoulder and tells her to be careful, that the Winter Soldier is fast, but his agents will be nearby, and she nods tersely.

The lead handler is gone, which means that the Asset answers to the small, thin child with the inhaler. It feels more right than anything has in a long time.

“James Barnes?” the child whispers.

The Asset remembers the Captain calling him this name, but it didn’t sound right. It should have been a small, thin child with the inhaler. So even though this child was much softer, she was as close as he could have gotten to his original handler, and since the original handler was the only one he didn’t think had ever caused him pain, he wanted to her to stick around.

“Yes.”

“Oh fuck me,” the child groans, and a faint flicker of warmth turns the Asset’s lips upward.

“We’re going to have to wash your mouth out with soap, Stevie.”

The child stares at him. “What did you call me?” she asks like he said the wrong thing.

He panics. “I’m sorry. Your name is 希望, I’m so sorry.”

The child shakes her head. “No, Xiwang, er, Hope, that’s my sister. I’m Jubilee. And I’m lost. Can you help?” she extends her hand.

The Asset allows itself to smile. It’s got a mission, finally, something to quiet the voice that’s his and not his at the same time. It accepts by taking the child’s hand to shake it, noticing the child hiding the inhaler behind her back. There’s something like shame on her face when she does, and hot indignation rises in the Asset’s middle, where there’s still a knot because it can’t find its feeding tube.

“It’s not psychosomatic,” he says it the same way it shoots, all certainty and muscle memory. “It’s not just in your head. You really can’t breathe.”

The child smiled like she wasn’t used to such an action, and yes, that was right, too.

* * *

Maria Hill was used to getting calls in the middle of the day from unfamiliar numbers, but this was the first one she received since the fall of SHIELD. “Hello?”

Through a modified voice, someone gives her the address to a still-destroyed warehouse on Ashton Circle before hanging up. This was also not something she was unfamiliar with, although it was, once again, the first time such a thing had happened since the fall of SHIELD. And the fact that SHIELD was really gone was starting to sink in now so she was just going to grab the edge of her desk and take a few deep breaths to get herself back under control while she was still alone.

Calming down, however, brought with it three epiphanies: one, that she didn’t have the resources to investigate this tip, nor was she stupid enough to go alone; two, that there was at least one field agent who hadn’t realized this yet, so deep undercover that she didn’t even know what said agent was doing, which meant that there were definitely others; and three, that this agent had called her personal cell, meaning that the previous lines of communication were no longer active, of course.

She touched her hip, expecting her service pistol before remembering that she had a personal firearm now, sitting in a drawer. There was also a man upstairs already chafing at the fact that he had destroyed all his flashy suits. Maria grinned as she buzzed her way into his office. Pepper was going to enjoy having time off from babysitting duty.

Or not. She closed the door as quickly as she had opened it, the sight of Pepper and Tony bouncing on his desk seared into her brain forever. She let herself imagine being in the middle of that sandwich, then decided that such an action would be far stupider than investigating the tip by herself.

Which she still wasn’t stupid enough to do. She took out her phone and called Wilson instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been, what, a month? I swear, the next chapter won't take as long.


	7. BlackWidowTestimony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha's infodump comes back to bite her, SHIELD's collapse comes back to bite Steve and Sharon, and Jubilee finishes her conversation with her mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the comics, Shogo is Jubilee's son. Obviously, Jubilee is a child herself in this story, so I figured it would work great as a name for her father.

**Fury <3 Pierce **@fierceforever  
“Some of the information I released was above my clearance level.” lmao so u dumped info u didn’t know? #BlackWidowTestimony

 **Italian Avengers Fanclub** @captainitaly  
#BlackWidowTestimony Srsly? #HowManyLifes are going to be lost bc of this?

 **#1 Iron Man Fan** @ultimatefrisbeepower  
@captainitaly Not as many as would’ve died if she hadn’t. I’m guessing you’re not #OnTheList Also terrible choice in role models

 **Beth Rogers** @falc0npunch  
@ultimatefrisbeepower Am I the only one worried about collateral damage? I mean, there was a bombing yesterday, maybe an assassin (cont.)

 **Beth Rogers** @falc0npunch  
(cont.) and there’s a lot of angry people with no work history getting desperate. Romanov really dropped the ball #BlackWidowTestimony

 **Mercedes Stark** @neverleavingargentina  
I’m more worried about the revelation that SHYDRA’s been destabilizing countries to put certain people in power. #WhatTheHellAmerica

 **Italian Avengers Fanclub** @captainitaly  
@neverleavingargentina And what if those undercover agents just leave it unstable? You don’t even have a puppet leader! #WhatTheHellAmerica

* * *

“So, how did it go?” Sam asked, trying to scrape a mangled egg off his pan.

“If you were on Twitter, you’d know that already,” Natasha said, voice just a little too smooth to be considered snappish, but undoubtedly meant to sound that way to provoke an argument.

“If I were on Twitter, I’d know that the president was born in Zimbabwe and lizards engineered 9/11 with technology they stole from the Pyramids,” Sam retorted. He caught Nat’s eye and they shared an exaggerated shudder, remembering the night Steve was first released from the hospital. They’d had to talk him down from “revealing the truth” about the moon landings. Of course, the human embodiment of stepping barefoot on a Lego, Tony Stark, had recorded the incident and emailed it to them on a nearly daily basis for several weeks. He thought it was hilarious.

“Three undercover agents were killed in the last twenty-four hours,” Natasha said calmly. “No ties to HYDRA, but my info-dump got their names released to the public, including members of the Russian mob whose human trafficking ring was on the verge of discovery. Now they’re underground again, and Agent Robert Fielding is still dead.”

Sam put the pan in the sink and ran it under hot, then cold water. Why was it so hard to get egg off a brand new pan? The overly-cheerful label in the trash even said “No Stick!”

“I have a wire brush,” Natasha said suddenly, reaching into yet another invisible pocket. “I stole it from Clint after he took one of my hairbrushes.” She handed it over, and it worked like a miracle.

Sam spontaneously decided to check his own possessions to make sure they were all where they were supposed to be.

As if she could read her mind, and perhaps she could, Natasha said, “I only do this with Clint. It’s a _friendly_ competition.” She thought for a moment before adding, “I used to steal Tony’s hammers when he annoyed Pepper too much. He noticed right away.”

Sam laughed. “Mechanics men like us,” he said, “we’re possessive over our tools.”

Natasha tilted her head and regarded him with a new level of respect. Sam tried not to blush too hard.

“Where’s Steve?” Natasha asked.

“It’s a bit cold for a shirtless rehearsal today, isn’t it? Or does he not get cold?” Sam asked as he wiped excess moisture off the pan and hung it above the island to dry.

“He gets cold faster than any of us,” Natasha said, and boy was there a lot for Sam to unpack behind those words. “I just need to make sure he’s not on his way to see Peggy.”

A block of ice formed in Sam’s stomach. “Um…”

Natasha stood up and swore. “I’m going to need you to take me to the hospital closest to her nursing home. Steve’s trusted you longer than he’s trusted me.”

There was something else there, too, but even if Sam was the kind of person who psychoanalyzed his friends, he wouldn’t do it when they were behind the wheel. But he couldn’t help the part of him that noticed Natasha biting her lip, jittering her legs, and continually readjusting her grip on the steering wheel as if it would help her get a grip on whatever was troubling her.

That thing turned out to be a cute blonde standing guard in front of hospital doors, arms crossed as a livid Steve yelled at her.

“Sharon!” Natasha pulled up the parking brake and immediately hopped out of the car, leaving Sam to miss the conversation as he circled around to find a place to park. By the time he was in front of the nursing home, Sharon was gone and Natasha had her arm around Steve’s shoulders as he ducked his head away from the street like he was some fifteen-year-old child.

Sam didn’t ask; he didn’t have to. Steve looked up at the sound of his hesitant footsteps and offered him one of his strained smiles. It looked the same as every other smile Steve had ever given him, and Sam wondered suddenly if Steve ever smiled from anything other than sadness.

“Peggy had a heart attack,” Steve answered his unasked question. “Seeing the Triskelion fall, what the news is saying happened to Fury and Pierce, hearing SHIELD’s name get dragged through the mud,” he didn’t shrug so much as twitch his shoulders upward. “I guess it did a number on her.”

“It’s not your fault, Steve,” Natasha spoke with patience that could only have come from constant repetition. “Sharon’s grieving; just give her time.”

“But Peggy-” Steve cut himself off with a rueful smile.

“Come on,” Sam said finally. “I didn’t put any money in the meter, and now SHIELD can’t just send us a new car if the old one gets towed.”

* * *

“Why do you want to see Melinda?” Clarice asked, folding up her arms carefully.

“I was supposed to come see you yesterday,” Jubilee admitted. “But I got a bit lost, and then I ran into Aunt May and Uncle Phil.”

“Uncle Phil? As in, Coulson?” Clarice frowned. “He died during the Invasion of Manhattan.”

Jubilee shook her head. “No, he was alive. In fact, he had a whole team, and they were working together to kidnap a man who helped me with my inhaler,” she frowned and drew her knees up to her chest. “I think they thought that he was trying to molest me, but he was just trying to make sure I breathed.”

“So, you want to ask Melinda what she used to bring him back and hope that it works on Shogo?”

“Kind of,” Jubilee plucked invisible lint off her jeans. “Aunt May found me and brought me to this abandoned warehouse where Uncle Phil was torturing the man in a kind of electric chair thing,” Jubilee made vague hand motions. “The weird thing is, when I walked in, and blew up the chair, Uncle Phil smiled at me. He made everybody leave and he touched my shoulder. He told me to be careful with evidence,” she bit her lip. “I think…he thought that I wanted to kill the man. But I don’t. And the Uncle Phil that I know would never kill a man that cruelly,” Jubilee frowned. “Do you get what I’m saying?”

“You think that whatever brought him back did it wrong,” Clarice answered.

A wide grin split Jubilee’s face. “Yes, exactly!”

“So you want to ask Melinda about it so you can see if it’s a worthwhile avenue to pursue as far as bringing Shogo back,” Clarice continued.

Jubilee’s face fell. “You don’t sound happy.”

Clarice sighed. “Listen, Jubilee, I loved Shogo, and he loved me. We divorced because openly having a serum-enhanced human in the family would have caused people to question whether we had an unfair advantage over everyone else, not because we didn’t want to stay together.”

“But,” Jubilee prompted when Clarice fell silent.

“But,” Clarice continued, softer, “energy discharges coming from your palms isn’t part of the natural order of things, and neither are teleportation javelins,” she gestured to the two crystal sticks attached to her hips. “Humans have messed with the natural order in so many ways, death is just about the only thing left. Should we really take that away?”

Jubilee looked down. “I just want to bring them back this one time,” she muttered, “because they were killed. Pierce murdered them by burning a hole in their chests. Their mouths were open like they screamed, and it looked like it hurt.” Clarice sat up a little straighter as she reached for her daughter’s face to wipe away her tears. “I just want them not to die alone, in pain. I want them to die better.”

“Who showed you that footage?” Clarice demanded, putting her hands on Jubilee’s shoulders.

Jubilee took in a deep, shuddering breath. “We all saw it,” she said, “at the slumber party. You know, every time our dads went to a World Security Council meeting, we’d all get together at Rachel’s house so we can’t get in trouble for watching censored movies whole.”

“‘We’ being you, Hope, Raani, Jaswinder, and Rachel,” Clarice stared.

“Yeah,” Jubilee clearly misinterpreted the reason behind Clarice’s horror. “I mean, okay, we kind of watched some illegal stuff. Raani made a couple of friends on this hacktivist website called Rising Tide, but they’re the primary organization responsible for making sure that nobody pulls Aunt Natasha’s infodump off the internet so they haven’t had the chance to pirate movies recently-”

“You want to bring back the entire World Security Council?” Clarice dropped her hands back down to her sides. “The same World Security Council who authorized Insight in the first place?”

“No,” Jubilee shook her head. “No, just our three fathers.”

Clarice shook her head too, crossing her arms. She hadn’t even realized she’d stood up until she noticed how far down she had to lean to look her daughter in the face. “They’re part of the same Council.”

“No!” Jubilee shouted. “No! When they realized what it’d be used to do, Father, and Nagendra, and Trevor, they all got killed for going against Insight! All I’m doing is reversing the last one of Pierce’s decisions. It’s a good idea!” When she saw Clarice’s hesitation, she added, “I saw the Insight target list and Father’s on it, so at the very least, I have to bring _him_ back, and I can’t do it without bringing back my friends’ fathers as well. I need their help with this.”

Clarice was surprised. “The WSC was targeted by their own weapons program?”

Jubilee shook her head. “Just Father. I think,” she paused to think, “I think it’s because he disagreed with the Council’s decision about Manhattan. I don’t think HYDRA appreciates insubordination.”

“Who told you?” Clarice demanded. She needed to know that Jubilee hadn’t simply guessed the answer by observing one of the former SHIELD employees with the magic voodoo skills people were always trying to teach her. Something prickled at the back of her neck, and she figured she was being watched.

“Hope was there when Father called him,” Jubilee answered. “Are you okay?” she asked, frowning.

Apparently, she had learned some magic voodoo skills after all, but not enough to figure out she was under observation. “Fine,” Clarice spit out. “What was your original plan to bring Shogo back?”

Jubilee broke eye contact and shuffled uncomfortably. “It’s a really long story,” she tried.

“Well, you can tell me after dinner,” Clarice said, turning around to go back to the school, freezing in her tracks when she saw the man who had been behind her for far too long without anyone noticing.

“I can’t stay for dinner, Mother. I came here with a friend,” Jubilee said unnecessarily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this (all two of you) please tell me what I'm doing wrong. Be harsh.


End file.
